Nomenclature needed for a tool

August 21, 2014 8:49 AM

If you were working with a digital tool that was responsible for placing or verifying digital signatures, what would you expect that tool to be called? Not a product name, but rather name of the class of tool (like a codec for encoding/decoding or a compiler for translating code in one language to another)?
posted by plinth to Writing & Language (6 answers total)

An authenticator?
posted by batter_my_heart at 8:51 AM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

are we talking electronic signatures or digital signatures? - I have seen such a tool referred to as e-sig validater - or signature validater.
posted by Suffocating Kitty at 8:54 AM on August 21, 2014

Key manager?
posted by the Real Dan at 11:10 AM on August 21, 2014

It is a Signature Verification Tool.
posted by Jairus at 11:37 AM on August 21, 2014

Digi signer
Verification manager
posted by hz37 at 2:22 PM on August 21, 2014

Response by poster: I'll probably end up naming it something dull like SignatureManager or SignatureHandler which is at least a straight forward name.

I'd prefer to use something like philographist, scrivener, graphology, or signatorium, but our customers would never understand any of them.

I really like philographist or philography (it is a person who collects autographs), but in its esoteric nature it violates the Shirley Temple principal of API design ("Don't be overly cute.").

Oddly enough, I independently invented the process of 'mocking' round about 1993. Except that I labeled all the mock objects/structures as 'ersatz'. Pity the term never left the building.
posted by plinth at 6:38 AM on August 22, 2014